A cruel summer hung over me the year I moved out of my parents’ house into a banana-yellow rental home in a part of town where all the mothers hid whiskey bottles in the dishwasher and the kids bounced down the avenues playing music I’ve never heard. This was the part of town I liked.

Five artists stuffed themselves into a three-bed, one-bathroom house.

Kevin, a drummer whose biceps were boulders, crashed on the couch with a Power Rangers pillow. Juan, who would scrub the toilet of a burning house, played piano in his room. Down the narrow hallway across from him, Chuck plucked his bass in his room and – when he could sleep – slept poorly and kept a tally on everyone he figured didn’t like him.

I slept in the upstairs loft with Joe. Me, on a yellowed mattress without sheets. He, on a narrow slice of futon we found in the trash next to a wedding photo a week earlier.

They were all in a rock band which changed names three times and opened a show for a hip-hop group in a bar once.

While painting, Joe asked me once why I write. I told him I write to fill the trashcan.

Everyone except for Kevin worked. All minimum wage jobs ranging from veggie arranger in a health foods store to tutor, but after rent and electricity and student loan payments – we were broke and couldn’t eat properly, so I lost 40 pounds in six months.

Increasingly throughout the six months, I noticed Chuck and Joe whisper in their room across that narrow hallway from Juan and Kevin, who whispered in their room.

I sat on the spiral staircase between both rooms leading to the loft one night and listened.

“Man, Chuck never practices, never cleans, never does anything,” Juan said from the other side of his door.

And Kevin agreed and called Chuck lazy, unmotivated.

“Juan is just crazy. All he does all day is practice – I work more hours than him, I can’t just practice all day like he can,” Chuck said.

Joe agreed and said Juan couldn’t understand the position Chuck was in with his demanding job.

Caught in the middle, all I could do was report what they said to each other and hope everyone would work together to fix everything.

Come winter, Chuck and Juan stopped speaking to each other.

By summer, we had found new, exciting ways to show our disdain. We found new words to describe each other. We kept our fists balled. We blamed each other for our sunburns and sore backs. We created a soundless vacuum between us in that little hallway and quietly hoped we would all go away until the lease was up.

In my time acting as the messenger pigeon for Juan and Chuck’s complaints, never once did they blame the courier for their problems.

In my time as a reporter, however, I’ve witnessed some in Clay County do just that.

Sometimes it manifests on bandit signs that look like a toddler conceptualized it on the back of a Denny’s tablemat then designed it on Microsoft Paint.

Other times, the vendetta materializes in “forgotten” media invites to press conferences and dismal support for school news stories.

Regardless, they’re all strategies that shut down discussion and suppress the sense of togetherness newspapers give to tight-knit communities such as Clay County. They’re strategies best saved for locker room squabbles and spit ball straws.

Newspapers will do what they’ve always done after the confetti from elections has been swept from the streets – hold candidates accountable and start a discussion.

If you feel upset by it, good. You should. Not everything in Clay County smells of perfume and squeaks when you step on it.

Feel upset with the politicians who lie to you, scrub the truth from public records and say what you want to hear to steal votes.

Talk about it with your friends, discuss it among your enemies with intelligence and poise, fume about it and break things – smoke a cigarette afterwards.

Indeed, there is a narrow hallway separating the two camps, but hallways were made for crossing.

Clay County, shake off the dust.

Don’t let the house crumble. If the house does fall, however, the newspaper will be there, as it always has been, to point out the termites.